Courageous Conversations – Moeletsi Mbeki Presentation Provokes Conversation about 2024 possibilities.

In her opening remarks, Professor Ingrid Woolard – dean of the Economics and Management Sciences (EMS) Faculty emphasized the importance of engagement in addressing societal issues such as unemployment, inequality and corruption, calling on the LLLers in attendance to become agents of positive change in determining the future of South Africa.

The main speaker for the breakfast was Mr Moeletsi Mbeki – political economist, analyst, journalist, and chairman of the South African Institute of International Affairs - an independent think tank based at the University of the Witwatersrand. Mbeki’s presentation focused on state failure and the prospects for South Africa with the 2024 general election. Discussing history, slavery, the Great Trek and major anniversaries taking place in 2024; he particularly drew connection between Afrikaner and African nationalism being a continuum and his hope that 2024 would witness the end of nationalism in South Africa.

“The African National Congress (ANC) has already started losing power, it has lost the support of the urban African population which is the backbone of the ANC…” Mbeki said, adding that “this loss of support of the urban African population can be attributed to three major mistakes by the ANC-led government, firstly, the acceptance of Black Economic Empowerment as a policy, the retention of state-owned companies after the end of apartheid and withdrawing the army from its border control duties”.

A regular commentator on contemporary politics, Mbeki was clear in his view that while South Africa has a failed government, it is not yet a failed state, due to the resilience of civil society, faith-based organizations and the business sector – which he believes can play a positive role in the economy should the government sell off its state-owned companies to this sector. Naturally, Mbeki’s presentation provoked thought and robust conversation amongst the attendees as many grappled with and engaged robustly with his assessment of South African political economy.

“LLL and SPL invited Moeletsi Mbeki in his capacity as a renowned political analyst in order to inspire thinking and conversations about the 2024 Elections. This need arose from the ongoing questions about South Africa's future.”, said Mr Enos Lekala, the LLL-Program Coordinator.

Highlighting the “Learn” component of the Listen, Live and Learn programme, Fallon Matthews opined that, “the presentation by Mr Mbeki tackled topics from BEE to privatisation and pointed out that policies should never be permanent but rather amended when the differences between equality and equity are not addressed within them. I liked that there was room for engagement and that the audience as well as the speaker could disagree with each but also hold room to learn.”

As a collaborative engagement between the SPL – a department within the EMS faculty – and the LLL-program, the breakfast is a great example of the unique learning opportunities which further contribute to student success and transformative experiences. More ‘courageous conversations’ of this type will be needed if the youth (and society) are to respond to the call by Prof Woolard to become change agents.

According to Kanti Mokgohloa, “the key takeaway was being careful on how you diagnose and analyse the problem or the past because a wrong analysis, more often than not creates an even bigger problem. A warm thank you to Mr Mbeki for honouring us with his presence.”

Matthews further shared that “attending allowed me the opportunity to grapple with the everyday issues we as South africans face, from unemployment to corruption and a lot of other ways we are disadvantaged by our current governance”.

“While we do not have a perfectly clear-cut solution, it was our intention to contribute by having this meaningful conversation and inspire the thinking around, especially since we are home to future leaders as a university,” added Lekala.